All of the multiplayer DLC so far is free, but you have to "buy" it for $0. Make sure you do this before you play or you'll miss out on pretty much half the game and won't be able to join matches.

THE BASICS

ME3's multiplayer is a cooperative four-player horde mode developed by a mostly independent team within Bioware. They've been very active with post-release support in the form of new maps, classes, powers, and weekly balance tweaks. It's a very well-balanced game and while some classes and guns are better than others, they're all viable at all difficulties depending on your play style. I went into ME3 expecting to ignore the multiplayer entirely, and wound up hooked. Even if you really hate the endings, you should give it a try.

Rounds consist of 10 waves of enemies with short breaks in between. Each wave increases the number and variety of enemies, and waves 3, 6, and 10 have timed objectives which need to be completed before enemies will stop respawning. These objectives are randomly chosen from the following:

Kill - 4 random enemies are highlighted and must be killed
Disarm - 4 devices randomly appear on the map and must be disarmed
Delivery - 2 objects must be carried from one part of the map to another
Hack - One specific area of the map must be occupied and defended
Escort - A drone must be defended as it travels along a pre-determined path

Completing missions gives you XP and credits. XP allows you to level up your character with more powers, and credits let you buy reinforcement packs. These packs can contain anything from one-time use ammo and armor powers, new guns and gun upgrades, new alien characters, etc. Items are awarded on a scale depending on how rare/expensive they are:

Common items have a blue background and are found in every pack.
Uncommon items have a silver background and are guaranteed to appear in Veteran packs.
Rare items have a gold background and are guaranteed to appear in Spectre packs.
Ultra-rare items have a black background and aren't guaranteed in any pack, but your best chance is with Premium Spectre packs.
There are also a handful of promotional items, like the N7 guns (which are only awarded during promotional weekends) or odd pre-order stuff hardly anyone uses like the Battlefield 3 Soldier or the Collector Rifle.

CHARACTERS

Characters are capped at level 20. At this point you can either "promote" them, which adds to your single player War Assets and resets them to level 1, or you can just continue to play with them on higher difficulties and rack up more credits.

You start out with two identical Human options in each class, but there are many races (6-8 in each class) you'll unlock over the course of the game. At this point there are way too many classes and abilities to usefully list, but the always useful theorycrafting machine from the Bioware forums can provide them if you'd like. This also lets you plan your character's build in advance and see your HP/damage stats, as well as conveniently share your favorite character builds to other players. By way of example, here are some pro build suggestions by yours truly.

Hazard Maps - These are newer versions of the original six maps with added "hazards," which range from cosmetic (Giant) to annoying (White) to hilarious (Reactor). They usually contain more grenades and slightly altered textures, but are otherwise identical.

The easiest way of tracking your weapons and items is the official Multiplayer Manifest, which takes your Bioware account and puts everything in easy-to-digest tabs showing you how unlucky you are compared to everyone else on your friends list.

If you want some unofficial weapon stats, this google doc is updated fairly frequently to keep up with the weekly balance changes. The game is tweaked so often that the stat bars in-game mean essentially nothing. For instance, they show the Valiant as having a low rate of fire when it's one of the fastest sniper rifles in the game.

Keep in mind that armored enemies get a flat damage reduction per shot, so you're penalized for using weapons with a high rate of fire but low damage per shot (mainly assault rifles). Conversely, shielded enemies have a damage "gate" which negates any extra damage done by the shot that finishes off their shields (this mainly affects the single-shot sniper rifles).

ENEMIES

Cerberus - Generally considered the easiest enemy faction. Lots of shielded enemies, with the only armored unit being the laffo Dragoon and the HP sink Atlas. Mostly dangerous due to Phantoms, who have cloaks, tough melee attacks, tougher hand cannon attacks, and one-hit-kills.

Reapers - Lots of armored enemies, and lots of very tiny enemies (Swarmers, Husks) that result in death by a thousand cuts. They're anchored by Banshees, which are fast and have the cheapest one-hit-kill, but in practice you'll probably die more to combined fire from the other enemies while you're busy running from a Banshee.

Geth - Both shielded and armored units. Very slow-moving, so fighting them is more of a matter of territorial attrition. Anchored by Primes, which don't one-hit-kill but have a ton of HP and stagger the gently caress out of you, although like Cerberus, you'll probably die more to the sneaky cloaky unit (Hunters).

Collectors - Only unit with multiple barrier enemies, plus two extremely hefty tanks in the Scion and Praetorian. Units can become "possessed" which makes them tougher and gives them an extra attack (different for each enemy). Kill or avoid Swarmers if you're a caster class, they will stop your power recharge.

TACTICS / TIPS

Work together. The game rewards you for this. Hitting an enemy with multiple biotic and tech attacks will set off biotic explosions and tech bursts for huge area damage and is one of the quicker ways to wipe out enemies. Several classes can set up combo attacks solo, but things get exponentially easier with helpful teammates. Sticking together will also keep your teammates from having to cross the entire map to revive your dumb rear end. Looking at you here, Human Vanguards.

Save your "consumable" items (medi-gel, missiles) for the later waves. The best time to use them is during waves 7-10, since these are the toughest waves and completing the wave 10 objective is what nets your credit payout. Wave 11's credit and XP bonuses are minor compared to Wave 10, so don't be that guy who dies leaving missiles on the table. Think of extraction as a bonus round.

Watch your cooldowns. If you're a class that relies heavily on powers, like an Asari Adept, you should only carry one gun and that gun should be light enough to keep your cooldowns near 200%. On the other hand, if you're an N7 Destroyer, feel free to take two heavy-rear end guns and go to town.

BUGS? IN A BIOWARE GAME? SURELY YOU JEST GOON SIR

Although this is on balance a great game, there are a number of bugs that Bioware have yet to fix, most likely due to the expense of console patches. Here are the known issues with the game:
- Shield Boost will lock up players in reloading animations. Heavy melee to free yourself.
- The detonation evolutions on Snap Freeze and Electric Slash do not work.
- Tech bursts detonated with Snap Freeze are centered on the player rather than the enemy.
- Incinerate's rank 6 combo evolution does not work with Snap Freeze.
- Asari Huntress' cloak does not give bonuses to weapons (retconned into a feature).
- Blade Armor's bounce-back damage does not scale correctly above Silver.
- Tactical Scan's rank 5 headshot evolution is broken.
- Ballistic/Nightshade Blades will not fire from cover.
- You cannot Shadow Strike an Atlas.
- Playing the Talon Mercenary will force default keybinds on PC.

This should basically be in the OP concerning new players and soldiers; Don't take concussive shot. Ever.

I've taken an 0/6/6/6/6 soldier into Gold and done quite well. One of the game's strengths is the variety, so I didn't really want to go down this road since it ends in "Geth Infiltrator with Piranha or gently caress off"

My advice to new players is to ignore the Soldier class entirely when starting out. Soldiers are a gun class and due to the unlock system you'll be stuck with poo poo guns for quite a while. Conversely if you get the hang of powers combos you can do fine on gold with Engineer, Adept, and Sentinal with just the basic starting guns. The sooner you stop playing bronze, the sooner you'll get good guns.

Aren't Cerberus characters also still bugged and don't get bonuses from fitness, or did they fix that? It doesn't feel like it.

Also another tip that might be worth adding to the OP for those looking to metagame their unlocks is to buy out the basic packs so the starter guns are maxed out, so you don't end up wasting more expensive pack unlocks on a Avenger 4 or whatever. Especially if you're impatient/lazy/etc. and want to start buying the better packs with MSP or whatever.

The whole N7 ranking number is absolutely retarded. I've lost count of the number of times I've been kicked from even silver games just because I'm below 100, and I'm a person who regularly scores first or second. This whole trend of penalizing people who don't have the time to grind out games for hours on end really needs to stop.

Also, concussive shot is a perfectly decent power. With maximum force it's really good at killing unshielded enemies, which is handy if three husks are running at you while you're holding an empty Claymore. In general it's useful to stagger enemies, cause enemies to dodge, and set off tech bursts. I prefer it to frag grenades, which I can't be bothered to learn to throw properly.

The whole N7 ranking number is absolutely retarded. I've lost count of the number of times I've been kicked from even silver games just because I'm below 100, and I'm a person who regularly scores first or second. This whole trend of penalizing people who don't have the time to grind out games for hours on end really needs to stop.

It's a bad system that forces people to look at it as a sheer numbers game, unfortunately. If you play the game a lot, you're gonna run into a bunch of sub-200 N7s and they're just gonna be terrible and you'll wipe because these people don't know what the gently caress they're doing and X amount of time and X amount of credits go down the toilet.

Unfortunately, in most cases, it's simpler to just kick anybody whose N7 is low rather than risk it. It's a really stupid superficial system, and I dunno what Bioware expected people to do with it.

Veteran Packs are definitely more reliable for getting Uncommon weapon upgrades, I know because thats how I finished maxing out all my Uncommon weapons. It's a bit of a toss up between getting Uncommon weapon upgrades and level III consumables since those are Uncommon now too, but they're relatively cheap, so I don't think its a big deal.

I feel like I'm contributing to the cause because my Krogans are pink and lavender . Also, I know people here hate the acolyte, but I love it when Furies use them. I've played with furies using them a couple times, and seeing cloudy shadow person bouncing a bunch of explody balls around the little room areas is fun. As you can see, I am a very serious player with not messed up priorities.

ew no that would make me even more reluctant to promote than I am already

Oh, I meant that promotion would only affect that class/race combo and do nothing but reset that combo. I wouldn't up your N7 score or anything. Regardless, even your idea on it's own would make the leader boards actually mean something.

The whole N7 ranking number is absolutely retarded. I've lost count of the number of times I've been kicked from even silver games just because I'm below 100, and I'm a person who regularly scores first or second. This whole trend of penalizing people who don't have the time to grind out games for hours on end really needs to stop.

I pretty much don't ever vote to kick anyone above character level 10 (or good guns) from silver games but I've gotten to a point in gold matches where if you aren't level 18+ or packing some serious heat I'm voting. If I'm trying to farm Cerb/Glacier/Gold or Platinum/Glacier, get out if you can't set off biotic explosions, abuse grenades, or are packing a piranha/reegar. I'm sick of wiping on wave 6 and losing consumables because somebody came into the game with a Geth SMG on their Quarian Engineer into a farming game.

That would make N7 ranks mean something, and actually motivate people to put in more than a token effort after Wave 10 payout.

Yeah, making extractions mean something would be nice. I would definitely care more about it if there was a system like this in place, beyond just re-leveling characters over and over (which I find painfully annoying.)

You could probably build some kind of equation that subtracts from the bonus per player that didn't make the extraction in order to reward full extractions. You could probably structure it such that (Extraction Bonus - (number of players down)) is your final reward. So, on a silver extract with one player down it would be (2 - 1) for a total of +1 N7 Rank. That same situation on Gold would result in +3 N7 rank, etc.

You really want to have people give a poo poo about extraction? Put a credit reward with it. End of story.

It really is a massive oversight that the last part of every mission becomes completely pointless once your character reaches level 20. It raises the question of why Wave 11 even exists on Gold and Platinum.

Probably because single player was intended to be the real meat and potatoes of the game with multiplayer more of an added extra. And to be honest it shows, what with the basic format, numerous bugs and the odd gameplay decisions people are discussing.

Still it turns out multiplayer is great despite the issues (free regular updates probably helping a lot there), and I haven't touched single player since the week after I bought the game.

It really is a massive oversight that the last part of every mission becomes completely pointless once your character reaches level 20. It raises the question of why Wave 11 even exists on Gold and Platinum.

Easiest way to address this and N7 ranking issues would be to award credits for promoting, probably in the ballpark of 100k to make it worthwhile. Players have an incentive to keep cycling through new characters and missing the full extraction XP bonus hurts more. They could even move the Mission Complete XP to Wave 11 to put more of an emphasis on surviving through extraction.

Wampus42 posted:

Speaking of not hating this character, what's the rhythm that you guys use with it? I tried to the whole snap freeze set up for tech burst, but it just ends up with me using melee a lot because it feels faster at taking down lower tier enemies.

I rarely try for tech bursts on mine. I ignore Incinerate, and spam Snap Freeze through corners and walls. I use Energy Drain to stun and strip shields, especially on enemies far away, and when things get close I Snap Freeze -> plant shield -> repeat until everything falls down, and if they get within melee range I melee them to death. I took the armor debuff on Snap Freeze so when Banshees and things show up your teammates can usually burn them down pretty quickly while you Snap Freeze and plant your shield.